Steam power during the Industrial Revolution

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See also the section on steam power in the main Industrial revolution#Steam power article

During the Industrial Revolution, steam power replaced water power and muscle power (which often came from horses) as the primary source of power in use in industry. Its first use was to pump water from mines. The early engines were not very efficient, but a modified version created by James Watt gave engines the power to become a driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. Steam power was not only used in engines but also in furnaces and other factory appliances that were difficult to implement prior to the invention of steam power.

1 Overview
2 Thomas Savery's engine
3 Thomas Newcomen's engine
4 James Watt's engine
5 Development after Watt
6 References

[edit] Overview

If iron was the key metal of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine was perhaps the most important machine technology. Inventions and improvements in the use of steam for power began prior to the 18th century, as they had with iron. As early as 1689, English engineer Thomas Savery created a steam engine to pump water from mines. Thomas Newcomen, another English engineer, developed an improved version by 1712. Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt made the most significant improvements, allowing the steam engine to be used in many industrial settings, not just in mining. Early mills had run successfully with water power, but the advancement of using the steam engine meant that a factory could be located anywhere, not just close to water.

In 1775 Watt formed an engine-building and engineering partnership with manufacturer Matthew Boulton. This partnership became one of the most important businesses of the Industrial Revolution. Boulton & Watt served as a kind of creative technical center for much of the British economy. They solved technical problems and spread the solutions to other companies. Similar firms did the same thing in other industries and were especially important in the machine tool industry. This type of interaction between companies was important because it reduced the amount of research time and expense that each business had to spend working with its own resources. The technological advances of the Industrial Revolution happened more quickly because firms often shared information, which they then could use to create new techniques or products.

Like iron production, steam engines found many uses in a variety of other industries, including steamboats and railroads. Steam engines are another example of how some changes brought by industrialization led to even more changes in other areas.

The development of the stationary steam engine was an essential early element of the Industrial Revolution, however it should be remembered that for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.

[edit] Thomas Savery's engine

The industrial use of steam power started with Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed and patented in London the first engine, which he called the "Miner's Friend" as he intended it to pump water from mines. This machine used steam at 8 to 10 atmospheres and didn't use a piston and cylinder but applied the steam pressure directly on to the surface of water in a cylinder to force it along an outlet pipe. It also used condensed steam to produce a partial vacuum to suck water into the cylinder. It generated about one horsepower (hp). It was used as a low-lift water pump in a few mines and a number of water works, but was not a success, being limited in the height it could raise water and was prone to boiler explosions.

[edit] Thomas Newcomen's engine

Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine

The first successful machine was the atmospheric engine, a low performance steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen apparently conceived his machine quite independently of Savery. His engines used a piston and cylinder, and operated with steam just above atmospheric pressure which was used to produce a partial vacuum in the cylinder when condensed by jets of cold water. The vacuum sucked a piston into the cylinder which moved under pressure from the atmosphere. The engine produced a succession of power strokes which could work a pump, but could not drive a rotating wheel. They were successfully put to use, for pumping out mines in England with the engine on the surface working a pump at the bottom of the mine by a long connecting rod. These were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build, but produced of the order of 5 hp. They were inefficient but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads they were usefully employed in pumping water from mines. They opened up a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite being fuel hungry Newcomen engines continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the nineteenth century as they were reliable and easy to maintain.

By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread to France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the patent expired of which 14 were abroad. According to Rolt and Allen, p 145, (see below) a grand total of 1454 engines had been built by 1800.

[edit] James Watt's engine

The steam engine's working was fundamentally unchanged until 1776, when James Watt succeeded in making his Watt steam engine by incorporating a series of improvements, especially the separate steam condenser chamber. These improved engine efficiency by about a factor of five - saving 75% on coal costs. The Watt steam engine's ability to drive rotary machinery also meant it could be used to drive a factory or mill directly. They were commercially very successful and by 1800 the firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with 164 acting as pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308 powering mill machinery. Most of these generated between 5 to 10 horsepower.

The development of machine tools such as the lathe, planing and shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut - which in turn made it possible to build larger and more powerful engines.

Around the year 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine began to shift from the beam engine (which was built within a stone or brick engine-house) to various patterns of portable engines (i.e., readily removable engines, but not on wheels), such as the table engine.

[edit] Development after Watt

Richard Trevithick, a Cornish blacksmith, began to use high pressure steam in 1799. This improved efficiency still further and made engines compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats.

The further development of the steam engine in the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's patent saw many improvements by a host of inventors and engineers.